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“Are you sure?” Rapp said, checking his magazine and starting toward a ladder to the south. “Try me.”
This time the silence stretched out even longer. Finally, Azarov responded. “What I want, Mr. Rapp—what I need—is for you to never leave this place.”
CHAPTER 56
RAPP inched forward on the steel mesh catwalk and then swung smoothly around the corner with his Glock stretched out in front of him. The walkway continued through a corridor of pipes before disappearing behind what looked like a small office.
He was near the facility’s high point, following a pattern that avoided choke points where Azarov might be waiting. The longer he could put off their inevitable confrontation, the better.
While Rapp had never been particularly good with names or phone numbers, he had a photographic memory for battlefields and tactical situations. He’d won a fair amount of money in college betting people that he could remember the positions of every person on a lacrosse field at any given moment in a game. Now he was using that unusual ability to create a detailed mental map of the facility.
Unfortunately, its size and complexity were taxing even his considerable talents. It was separated into three sections, largely inaccessible to each other—possibly to contain fires or explosions. There were four loosely defined levels accessed via countless ladders, steps, and ramps. Mesh walkways of varying widths snaked in every direction, diving in and out of view as they faded into the dusty air.
He started forward, moving his head back and forth, taking in everything. About halfway to the office, he crouched beneath a small overhang. The boots he’d been provided were good in the sand, but a disaster on the thin steel he was moving across. They were not only heavy, but also caused a dull ring with every footfall. Rapp was reluctant to abandon them, but decided that it was the better of his two bad options.
He covered the remaining length of the walkway in stocking feet, noting that his footfalls were now completely inaudible and that his traction wasn’t too badly compro
mised. On the downside, the steel was hot enough to burn through to his feet.
Rapp slipped through the open door to the office and ducked below an empty window frame. The room was probably only ten feet square and full of debris not worth taking when the facility was abandoned. A spitting image of the place where Azarov had taken out Scott Coleman. Hopefully, not an omen of what was to come.
He pawed through the files, furniture, and tools on the floor, looking for anything useful. No ice-cold Cokes or silencers were on offer, but he did find a pile of old work clothing that was of interest. Like his abandoned boots, the tan uniform had been useful in the sand but was less than optimal in a complex built primarily of unpainted steel. The gray overalls wadded up in the corner would provide better camouflage and had the potential to confuse his opponent’s expectations. They even turned out to be his size.
Better yet was a pair of well-used socks that he pulled on over his own. They added just enough insulation to protect his feet from the sun-heated metal and would mitigate any damage should he hit a jagged edge or have to move fast.
Rapp started crawling back toward the door when he spotted a large wrench beneath an Arabic language newspaper. He wrapped it in the pants he’d taken off and shoved it down the back of his overalls. It wasn’t the most convenient thing to carry into battle, but he had an idea that might make it worth the weight.
Rapp stayed low as he came back onto the catwalk and turned left. He covered the next fifty yards in a little less than a minute, continuing to mentally map the maze around him. As he was nearing a set of steps connecting two catwalks, his peripheral vision detected motion above and to his right. Instinctively, he threw himself backward and fired in the direction of the movement. Just as he did, a bullet sparked off a pipe directly to left of where his head had been a split second before.
• • •
Grisha Azarov ducked involuntarily when a bullet hissed past him at what he estimated was a distance of less than a meter. His own shot had been perfectly aligned, but Rapp dropped to the ground an instant before it could find its mark.
The Russian immediately began analyzing the rare failure. As expected, Rapp was extremely quick and had razor-sharp battlefield instincts, but these gifts weren’t the reasons he was still alive. That was Azarov’s own fault. He’d been looking for a man in Saudi army fatigues and the change had caused him to hesitate. A brief sliver of time that against any other opponent would have been meaningless. Against Mitch Rapp, it was the kind of mistake that could prove fatal.
Now there was nowhere for the CIA man to go—he was stranded in the low ground with little overhead cover. Azarov sprinted toward a ladder and climbed halfway up it, leaping onto an immense pipe and landing with a deep ring that resonated through the air. He let his momentum carry him to a three-meter gap that plunged down to the base of the facility. Falling forward onto his stomach, he thrust his pistol over the edge of the narrow platform he’d come to a stop on. Rapp was one level below, running along the only catwalk accessible to him. His back was square to Azarov’s position. An easy shot even for a novice.
He lined up, but before he could fire, Rapp vaulted the railing and fell toward the top of a containment tank no more than two meters in diameter. The reason he’d been able to run so silently became evident when he landed. His stocking feet provided no purchase on the smooth steel and he slid out of control toward its edge. A moment later, he was gone. Azarov heard the dull thuds of a body bouncing through the pipes on its way to the ground. While impossible to see from his current position, he knew that it was at least a thirty-meter drop. Impossible even for the storied Mitch Rapp to survive.
The Russian continued to aim over the top of the platform, his heart rate higher than it had been on an operation in years. It was difficult to conclude anything but that the man had fallen. Removing his boots had been a reasonable risk to take, but in this case the strategy had failed. Mitch Rapp was either dead or dying, his broken body bleeding into the sand.
Then why was he still afraid of the American? It seemed inconceivable that Rapp had survived, but until Azarov saw the body, the possibility existed. As much as he wanted to retreat to the SUV and escape across the desert, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not until he was certain of the CIA man’s fate.
• • •
Rapp threw himself to the catwalk, already certain that the Hail Mary shot he’d taken at the Russian had gone wide. He immediately rolled to his feet and began sprinting toward a series of tanks about ten feet from the edge of the right hand railing.
If he were Azarov, he’d climb halfway up the ladder to his left and then use a large pipe to gain a platform that jutted out over open air. It would provide a perfect position to fire down on Rapp’s unprotected position.
He was only about halfway to the tanks when the ring of someone landing on that very overhead pipe sounded—a full second sooner than Rapp thought possible. He pushed himself to a speed that felt like it was going to shatter his bad knee with every stride.
The second ring reached him when he was still ten feet out from the section of railing he was he was going for. Azarov would be lining up and this time he wouldn’t miss.
Rapp leapt the rail earlier than planned but still managed to clear the gap, landing on top of a tank and going into an uncontrolled slide toward the opposite edge. He tumbled over and dropped five feet before grabbing a steel grid that, thank God, was right where he remembered it. The Glock was still in his left hand and stopping his momentum with only his right demanded a graceless maneuver that nearly dislocated his shoulder.
Once he got his feet under him, he yanked the wrench from his overalls and threw it down at the pipes below. The fact that it was wrapped in cloth kept it from ringing against the metal, instead giving it a muted thud that would be fairly convincing mixed with the howl of the wind.
The Russian was in an adjacent section of the facility and there was no easy way for him to cross over. That made it possible for Rapp to take his time climbing down and gaining a walkway twenty feet below. What would Azarov do now? Was he trusting enough to go for his vehicle and run? Or would he want to confirm that his adversary was dead?
